Conference Talks & Media Events

Granfalloon! (it's a Vonnegut thing...)

May 15, 2023     #media

I am excited to be a small part of the upcoming Granfalloon Festival hosted by the IU Arts and Humanities Council. What is a Granfalloon, you might ask? According to Wikipedia, it is an element of the fictional religion of... <more>

Roblox!

October 26, 2021     #media

One of the most rewarding creative challenges I have as a scholar is figuring out ways to communicate my research to experts in industry. I was invited to give a talk to software developers at the game company Roblox... <more>

The Future of Artificial Intelligence

November 29, 2018     #media #research

At the end of November the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at Cambridge University hosted a two-day event gathering historians and practioners from around the world. I was pleased to be invited to participate in the opening plenary... <more>

Contextualizing the Google Manifesto

August 12, 2017     #media #research

“We’re just starting to acknowledge the work that these women did — but that’s a fault of our history, not a function of their lack of presence. They were invisible, but they weren’t absent.”1

... <more>

History of Computer Dating

July 23, 2016     #media

National Geographic has produced an excellent series on the history of sex and sexuality. As part of that series, they ran an episode on sex and technology. If you watch closely, you can see me talking about the <more>

The Art of Software Maintenance

April 05, 2016     #research #media

It often surprises my students when I tell them that as much as 60-80% of all software development effort (time and money) goes into software maintenance. After all, software is not a technology that we think of as “breaking down”... <more>

Hipster HoC @ SXSW

February 15, 2016     #media

On March 12 at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, TX, I will be presenting as part of a panel on the untold history of women in computing. If you happen to be in Austin for SXSW, come see... <more>

Review of Turing's Cathedral

June 29, 2013     #media

Writing book reviews is one of the more important but least rewarded of all academic activities. Every professional researcher, particularly those in the humanities and social sciences, relies extensively on book reviews to keep current with a large and growing... <more>

Pioneers in Informatics

November 29, 2012     #media

Beginning on Monday (12/3/2012), Radio Österreich (Austrian public radio) will be running a series on gender and computer science. I was interviewed for the project, and so if you want to hear me summarize my research on the history of... <more>

Stanford University: Making Programming Masculine

February 26, 2011     #media

On February 28 I will be giving a talk at Stanford on gender issues in the history of the computing professions. The seminar is being jointly hosted by the program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS), the History and Philosophy... <more>

Managing your digital persona

February 22, 2010     #media

Academic careers are based on reputation, and for younger scholars at least part of that reputation is based on your online persona. But online personas are notoriously difficult to manage — unlike other forms of... <more>

Information Technology, Organizations, and Work Processes

June 05, 2009     #media

This week I will be in Copenhagen to comment on papers for a conference on information technology and work processes. An excellent program of papers on everything from software development practices to the history of computing in the banking industry.... <more>

Women of Power Documentaries

April 13, 2009     #media

On Tuesday, April 14, I will be responding to a screening of the documentary “To Dream Tomorrow,” which is about computing pioneer Ada Byron Lovelace, who is often referred to as the first computer... <more>

SAS Frontiers Magazine

December 12, 2008     #media

The current issue of School of Arts & Science Frontiers magazine features a review of my recent work on the Internet and American commerce.

The article is written by B. Davin Stengel, and is... <more>

Lectronic Lovin

November 07, 2008     #media

This past year my cyberculture seminar happened to meet on Valentine’s day, and so we did a special session on online dating. One of the things to come out of that was an interview... <more>

Top-Secret Rosies

July 16, 2007     #media

I just finished filming a segment for a documentary by local film-maker LeAnn Erikson. I was just one of the talking-head historians. The real heroes of the film are the women who worked as mathematicians and “human... <more>

The Research Channel II

July 16, 2007     #media

Case Files in the History of Computing

This is the second in a series of symposium hosted by the Franklin Institute and the History & Sociology of Science department celebrating the opening of a new... <more>

University of Wisconsin

May 10, 2007     #media

On February 20th, 2007, Dr. Ensmenger will be giving a talk at the University of Wisconsin entitled “Neither Luddites nor Sages: Physicians and Professors as Reluctant Users of the Internet.”

The seminar is... <more>

Research Channel I

August 09, 2006     #media

The History of Communications in America

The Franklin Institute offers an electronic presentation of its Case Files, a collection of primary source documents that exists as an unknown repository of the history of science and... <more>

Radio Odyssey - WBEZ Chicago

May 10, 2005     #media

As rapidly as computer technology has changed, so have our hopes for – and fears about – its potential. How do we imagine the place of computers in our lives?

Historians of science and technology Nathan Ensmenger and Paul Edwards... <more>

Clive Thompson, The Secret History of Women in Coding, New York Times, February 13, 2019

Diane Gherson, How bias pushed the ‘Computer Girls’ out of tech, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 10, 2017

Matt Kessler, The Environmental Cost of Internet Porn, The Atlantic, December 13, 2017

Claire Cain Miller, Tech’s Damaging Myth of the Loner Genius Nerd, New York Times, August 12, 2017

Olivia Waxman, Women in Tech and the History Behind That Controversial Google Diversity Memo, Time Magazine, August 8, 2017

Sarah Jeong and Rachel Becker, Science Doesn’t Explain Tech’s Diversity Problem — History Does, The Verge, August 16, 2017

Oliver Voß, Die Tech-Branche und ihr Sexismusproblem, Der Tagespiel, August 8, 2017

Rodrigo Ghedin, Google acerta ao demitir engenheiro acusado de misoginia, Nova Economia, September 8, 2017

WFIU, Noon Edition, Panel Discussion, "The Near Future of Artificial Intelligence", October2017

Backstory, Binary Coeds: The Secret History of Women in Programming, February 6, 2015

Radio Österreich, "Women Pioneers in Informatics", December 2012

Chicago Public Radio, "The Social History of Computing," July 2005.

Deutsches Museum, Munich
Keynote address
Who’s Driving? Agency and Evidence in the History of Technical Safety
December 6-7, 2018
Cambridge University
The Future of Artificial Intelligence: Views from History
November 29, 2018
Stevens Institute of Technology
March 5, 2018
Princeton University Citizen Scientists
February 15, 2018
Science & Intersectionality
Society for the History of Technology Conference
October 26, 2017
Plenary Speaker: Technology, Democracy and Participation
WFIU Radio
October 6, 2017
The Near Future of Artifical Intelligence
Siegen University, Germany
July 6-8, 2017
Computing is Work! International Conference
USC Digital Humanities Program
The Environmental History of the Digital Economy
April 19, 2017
German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.
The Social History of the Computer Revolution
March 23, 2017
UC Davis Center for Science and Innovation Studies
Bitcoin & the Environment
Feb 6, 2017
Stanford University
Shift CTRL: New Perspectives on New Media
May 6-7, 2016
University of Nevada, Reno
April 14, 2016
Maintainers Conference
Stevens Institute of Technology
April 7-9, 2016
Yale University
History of Science and Medicine
March 28, 2016
South by Southwest
Austin, TX
March 12, 2016
University of Michigan
Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society
Nov 11, 2015
SIGCIS Keynote
October 11, 2015
Society for the History of Technology
Albuquerque, NM
UCLA Historicizing Masculinities
May 20, 2015
University of California Los Angeles
Lawrence Badash Memorial Lecture
January 21, 2015
University of California Santa Barbara
Mistakes, Ignorance, Contingency, and Error in Science, Medicine, and Technology
October 2-4, 2014
Deutsches Museum, Berlin.
Computer Security History Workshop
July 11-12, 2014
Charles Babbage Institute
History and Philosophy of Computing
October 28-31, 2013
Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris.
Association of Internet Researchers
October 24-27, 2013
Denver, Colorado
The NAS at 150: Celebrating Service to the Nation
October 16-18, 2013
National Academy of the Sciences
Washington, D.C.